cité des dames a le grand mérite de mettre à la portée des étudiants et de nombreux lecteurs le texte intégral d’œuvres du XVIe siècle scrupuleusement éditées par des spécialistes dont la réputation n’est plus à faire. Le prix modique de ses éditions, leur petit format, la simplicité et l’élégance de leur présentation jouent un rôle considérable dans leur popularité. C’est aussi et surtout la richesse des notes qui accompagnent le texte intégral des Epîtres et du Songe qui en font pour tout étudiant un parfait outil de travail. Il convient ici de féliciter Éliane Viennot, professeur à l’Université de Saint-Étienne, membre de l’Institut universitaire de France, pour l’initiative de cette collection publiée sous sa direction par les Presses de l’Université de Saint-Étienne. R égine R eynolds-Cornell, Professeur émérite, Agnes Scott College Patricia Lee Rubin Images and Identity in Fifteenth-Century Florence New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007. Pp. xix, 418. This sophisticated textbook is designed for upper-level undergraduate and gradu- ate students, particularly those specializing in art history. Rubin’s publication retains some aspects of a traditional art-history survey book; it features hundreds of photographic reproductions, many of them in colour, primarily of canonical art works. It is nevertheless superior to conventional textbooks—such as Frederick Hartt’s History of Italian Renaissance Art, now in its sixth edition—because it goes beyond discussing the biographical details and styles of individual artists. Images and Identity in Fifteenth-Century Florence includes chapters on the visual display of honour, and the politics of looking and being looked at in early modern Italy, offering a welcome synthesis of some of the latest scholarship in the field. Rubin’s book complements other excellent publications created to enrich the study of early modern visual culture, notably Evelyn Welch’s Art and Society in Italy, 1300–1500, a broader survey of Italian art first published in 1997. Like Welch, Rubin emphasizes the economic dimension of early modern Italian visual culture, explaining why material things such as clothing, linen, ar- mour, and furnishings were requisite for eminent citizens needing to display their rank. Drawing on early modern texts written by Leon Battista A lberti, Leonardo Bruni, and Matteo Palmieri, in addition to various archival sources, Rubin charts the “authority of possession” (16). She argues that acquiring luxurious goods was not so much a personal choice as a necessity for Florentine citizens striving to 118 Book R eviews RenRef32-4.indd 118 9/01/10 3:14:44 PM create reputations in relation to developing ideologies of wealth. Yet Rubin avoids economic determinism by focusing on the multiple interests of patrons, providing a welcome critique of explanations of the Italian Renaissance that focus on the rise of humanism to account for the concomitant flowering of visual culture. She continues to challenge previous assertions of humanism’s promotion of visual art to the status of a noble or liberal practice by examining both the tax registers and business negotiations of key artists. In an analysis of Donatello, for example, Rubin recounts that the sculptor refused to wear the fine clothes supplied by his patron, Cosimo de Medici. Donatello at once resisted moving beyond his more lowly rank as artist, and asserted a kind of authority and emerging artistic identity by not allowing himself to be refashioned by his patron. With such detailed discussions, Rubin conveys the complexity of some of the economic exchanges made between Florentine artists and their patrons. Other chapters continue to extend understandings of early modern Italian visual culture by exploring the domain of visuality, moving beyond biological understandings of vision to examine historically and culturally specific ways of seeing the world. Historians and art historians have been producing historical and theoretical writing on this topic for at least the past fifteen years, and Rubin does not repeat their findings. Instead, she summarizes and applies the work relevant to her topic, namely fifteenth-century Florentine art and culture. In Chapter Five, “The Eye of the Beholder,” Rubin considers the representation of vision in Dante’s Divine Comedy, a poem that she says both “describes a vision and is about vision.” This emphasis on a written account of the pleasures and pain associated with seeing is a welcome addition to the discussions of the development of linear perspective typically included in textbooks devoted to Italian Renaissance art. Rubin additionally examines contemporary theories of vision, addressing Alberti’s interest in Aristotle’s ideas about sight, as well as the intromission theory, which held that eyes receive rays from the surfaces of objects, rather than emitting rays toward those objects. Rubin argues that this emphasis on the power of the direct ray is crucial to under- standing the influential paintings of Giotto, which often feature representations of purposeful looking to convey biblical narratives. She furthermore addresses the kind of inner seeing sometimes associated with visual culture, promoted by such religious figures as the Dominican bishop Giovanni Dominici. He advised parents to bring children “up in the sight” of sacred representations so that young people could both identify with and emulate the visual images. In the four chapters that focus on visuality, Rubin provides a thorough overview of various acts of looking Comptes r endus 119 RenRef32-4.indd 119 9/01/10 3:14:44 PM in early modern Florence, as well as representations of vision, debates about optical functioning, and the presumed pedagogical aspects of seeing. Rubin’s textbook offers a compelling synthesis capable of inspiring students to grasp the richness of current scholarship on early modern Italian visual culture, encouraging them to explore the field more fully. The author provides extensive bibliographical notes as an addendum, describing additional scholarship on such themes as consumption, marriage, and the ethics of expenditure during the early modern period. Gender is only briefly mentioned, however, in a few chapters, even though the work of female artisans and the commissions ordered by female patrons are of current interest to scholars. The book also lacks a sustained consideration of the early modern trading practices which saw international objects flood into Florence, another issue increasingly scrutinized by specialists in the field. Anyone hoping to offer a complete overview would thus need to provide students with supplementary readings. A ll the same, the sustained focus of Images and Identity in Fifteenth-Century Florence on such central concerns as visuality is most welcome. In the end, Rubin’s up-to-date exploration of a limited time frame and cultural period is successful, and similar publications on other historical periods would be well received by both experts and students interested in the politics and practices of visual culture. LIANNE McTAVISH, University of Alberta John McA fferty The Reconstruction of the Church of Ireland: Bishop Bramhall and the Laudian Reforms, 1633–1641 Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. pp. xiv, 268. John McA fferty has written a solid and impressive account of the rise, contested implications, and eventual decline of the Laudian “reconstruction” of the Church of Ireland. His rigorous and careful argument will significantly advance scholarly understanding of a complex and confused movement in one of the most complex and confused periods of early modern Irish history. McA fferty’s study focuses on the clerical career of John Bramhall, a Yorkshire clergyman whose promotions in the Church of Ireland were fast-tracked from relatively humble origins through his associations among the ecclesiastical and administrative elite. Bramhall arrived in Ireland one century after the legislative 120 Book R eviews RenRef32-4.indd 120 9/01/10 3:14:44 PM